Let it be known that, at the time of writing, I envy every single person who reads this preview. Why? Because Iâ€™ve just started up … Braid for the first time, and Iâ€™ll never get to do it again. Iâ€™ll be able to play it again, sure, but it wonâ€™t ever be the same as it was just now. I canâ€™t, unlike the gameâ€™s protagonist, rewind time and have the same experience again.

“Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve replayed it like three times. In the span of two days.” – from the Destructoid article.

Is the game really that short? Don’t get me wrong, I’d much prefer a game with six hours of interesting content to last precisely that long, instead of being padded to sixty hours. Still, being able to blaze through the game on an afternoon seems kind of disappointing.

Then again, there’s probably no such thing as a great, content-intensive game that isn’t too short.

I dunno, I don’t think it’s that short. I mean you can eat a bag of jelly beans in an afternoon (and feel sick, probably), or you can keep it on your desk and savor it over a longer period of time. We see Braid as a refrigerator … er, nevermind.

When I first played the game, there were some puzzles that stumped me, that I avoided for a little while. I’d try again the next day or later in the week. It’s not a 40 hour quest, but there’s no filler. It feels like the right length for what it is.

Yeah, the game is designed to be a dense, filler-free experience. Most people who play for the first time, and are not bad at solving puzzles, finish the game in 5-6 hours. But since it’s a puzzle game, after that first play-through, you can get through the game faster if you want. On the leaderboards right now, there are speed run times in the 40-minute range… so that’s how fast you can go through the whole game if you know the answers to all the puzzles and just go.

The idea that games have to be huge, and eat a large part of your life, is an idea that is starting to go… actually, I’ve listened to a few podcasts this week all of which were talking about how long games kind of suck.

So, imagine you are playing a 40-hour game, but all the repetition and filler have been stripped out, and it’s 5 hours long now. So you get your 40 hours of good stuff in 5 hours, and have 35 hours left over to go outside and hike or watch a good movie or learn kung fu or go have sex or something. That’s what Braid is.

At least developers should have the guts to charge less for their game when it’s a 5 hours long rollercoaster ride a la Call of Duty 4, instead of a 40hrs epic repetition of things in my opinion. I don’t think having quite a lot of filler content necessarily will ruin the fact that I enjoy being busy with games a bit longer than just 5 hours per each 50 bucks. 🙂

That having said though, some games offer such a unique experience that they are worth ALMOST whatever the developer is charging. Max Payne comes to mind indeed.

Well, I do think games should be a lot cheaper. $50 is a lot for a 5-hour experience. Maybe $20 is better. Then again, what if it was a really great experience? Here in the SF Bay Area, the standard rate for a 90-minute massage is $120…

The thing I don’t understand is why reviewers include the length or the price in their review of the _quality_ of a game, rather than simply listing it along with their score. I don’t normally see, like, Roger Ebert say “well it was a really good film, but it was only an hour and fifteen minutes so I don’t think it’s worth the $10 admission price”.

That’s just not appropriate. The review should be about the quality of the game in absolute terms. Then the person can look at the “running time” and “price” in the summary, and make an informed consumer decision.

The risk of establishing this trend of “quantity has a quality all its own” is that games will always be artificially bloated, because if they don’t bloat, they won’t get the high review scores, and that could lead to less sales, etc., etc., even if an informed consumer wouldn’t actually care about the shorter running time.

Yeah, I agree. Especially given that money means very different things to different people. If a game is mediocre, I don’t care if it only costs $10, I don’t want to touch it. If a game is really good, I will gladly pay $200 or whatever. How can a reviewer know my (or someone else’s) attitude toward price?

I love the aesthetic of the game. Evil Avatar Radio had Jonathon on their show, and while on there I had mentioned to him that the aesthetic and overall idea of the different worlds with their own unique rule within briad is very similar to an anime that I think anyone who enjoyed braid and enjoys anime would like. It is a korean anime called Kino’s Journey. Pick it up… love it.